We have found that in many cases, the four processes emerge as a result of how adaptation projects are designed and implemented. Here we focus on eight examples to illustrate how the processes work; a summary is presented in Table 1.

Table 1: The political economy of climate adaptation in practice Full size table

Two cases demonstrate the process of enclosure. In Melbourne, Australia, when planners confronted declining rates of precipitation and a drop in the storage capacity of the city's reservoirs, they decided to build the Wonthaggi desalinization plant with a maximum capacity of 150 billion litres per year. To construct the plant, however, they had to enclose and expropriate thirteen pieces of land of significant value to the Bunurong aboriginal community7. In Honduras, disaster recovery efforts in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch enabled private actors to enclose activities formerly in the public sphere. Private organizations, mostly transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs), resettled survivors in the Amarateca Valley and founded new communities — taking responsibility for water works, road construction, schools, housing, and other infrastructure — without government supervision. The lack of public oversight allowed the private organizations involved to pursue development agendas that culminated in insecurity, high crime, violent murder and conflict within some communities, and it made them entirely dependent on NGOs for services provision8.

The process of exclusion can be illustrated by two cases. In Norway, management efforts in coastal zones that were facilitated by the Planning and Building Act of 1985 benefitted the most dominant and centralized groups of stakeholders — Norwegian municipalities, fishers, farmers, and tourist entrepreneurs — and marginalized less represented or decentralized groups such as reindeer herders, community-based institutions, and environmental NGOs. As a result of low representation in the coastal planning process, community organizations and environmental groups struggled to ensure that their interests and concerns were heard above those of the well-organized commercial stakeholders9. In the low-lying community of Kivalina, Alaska, which was facing displacement from the effects of sea-level rise, authority over adaptation projects was ceded to federal government agencies, excluding local input into the decision-making process. Decisions to proceed with an expensive rock revetment sea-barrier project, which ironically failed the day before its inauguration, were made by the Army Corps of Engineers and private government contractors even though it went against the wishes of the community itself10.

The incidence of encroachment can be demonstrated by marine protected areas (MPAs) such as the Mnazi Bay–Ruvuma Estuary Marine Park, Tanzania, which was set up to bolster the resilience of coral reefs. However, these MPAs have encroached upon the traditional fishing areas of villagers, leading to dependence on energy-intensive farming with higher rates of greenhouse-gas emissions11. Moreover, fishers have had to migrate to other areas up and down the coast with higher fuel costs and lower-quality catches; many have also had to abandon their small craft in favour of larger motorized boats that also feature an extended range and scuba gear, further increasing emissions. In the Maldives, the past decade has seen the government support the idea of 'safer islands' by means of hardening or climate-proofing infrastructure to the risks of sea-level rise, storm surge, and saltwater intrusion12,13,14. Efforts have centred largely on seawalls, sand mining to be used in construction, and vegetation removal for the expansion of ports and harbours to improve transport corridor efficiency. Undesired consequences have been a degraded natural buffer against storm swells and deteriorating coral reefs, as seawalls have interrupted the ebb and flow of oceanic nutrient cycles.

Two final case studies exemplify entrenchment. In Burkina Faso, livelihood diversification programmes seeking to bolster resilience have instead seen vulnerable households cope with drought by selling off productive assets such as livestock. This has benefited predatory marketers who were able to buy livestock at low prices from distressed farmers only to resell them at great profit in other areas15. As a result, poor households became trapped in a vicious cycle of borrowing, pawning, and mortgaging of crops. There was a gendered dimension to this entrenchment as well: it was primarily women who had to sell cloth, utensils, and jewellery (accumulated primarily for their daughters' weddings) to traders who knew they were desperate for money. In extreme situations some rural women provided sexual services to those traders in exchange for food and water16. In Kenya, relief aid to natural disaster victims has been unfairly allocated to urban areas first and peripheral, rural areas last. In some cases, smaller, pastoral communities affected by drought were forced to abandon their assets and move into permanent aid camps, while corrupt officials were able to funnel resources to grow their wealth, with some using relief funds to erect their own “drought castles”17.